Alignment of operations strategy, information strategic orientation, and performance: an empirical study

Abstract

Functional-level strategic planning should align with and support business-level strategies. Alignment of strategies is presumed to be a positive contributor to business performance just as misalignment is presumed to be a negative contributor. These presumptions should be true for all types of business environments including the e-commerce environment. This study develops and tests these presumptions by examining managers’ perceptions of strategy. Drawing on both operations strategy and information systems strategy literature, this research compares how these managers’ perceptions of operations strategy and information system strategic orientation are aligned in an e-commerce setting. Based on a sample of matched pairs of general managers and operations managers from 176 organisations in the e-commerce industry, hypotheses relating strategy and business performance are tested. The influence of other organisational variables (i.e. operations manager tenure and years of associations with general manager) to moderate the results were also tested. The results support the hypotheses that organisational variables moderate the relationship between operations managers’ and general managers’ perceptions of operations strategy, IS strategy orientation, and the fit between them in e-commerce organisations.